AIFF 2009 - How to Find the Shorts - Dunlap Shohl's Frozen Shorts

I picked up a hard copy of the Festival Schedule today.

Later I noticed that Anchorage cartoonist and film maker, Peter Dunlap-Shohl, put up a new short animation on his blog Frozen Grin.  I thought I'd put it up here because I liked it and because it can serve as an appetizer for his animated short in the Festival - Frozen Shorts.

But I also realized this would be a good opportunity to alert you to the difficulty of finding specific shorts in the printed schedule.  Shorts (including short animations) are grouped together into programs.  Frozen Shorts is actually in two programs - becaue it's in two different film categories:  Snowdance ("films about Alaska and by Alaskans") and Animation. 

So, in the Schedule on page 14 you can see the Snowdance listings, and Frozen Shorts is in Snowdance 2 which will show on

Tuesday, Dec. 8 at 5:45pm at the Alaska Experience Theater (in the Ship Creek Mall downtown) AND
Saturday, Dec. 12  at 5:30pm at Out North

But Frozen Shorts is also part of the collection of 18 animated shorts that are grouped into the program Animation 2, also known as "Should I Stay or Should I Go?  And Other Confusing Questions. 

That program is also playing twice

Sat. Dec 5 at 5:45 at Out North
Tues. Dec 8 at 7:45pm at Out North

Now, there may be an easier way to find out exactly when a particular short film is playing.  The online program lets you click and see what's there.  But at the moment, at least for Snowdance 2 there there's an extra showing on Sunday Dec. 6 at 3pm at the Bear Tooth.



So maybe there's one more screening that wasn't listed in the Snowdance 2 listing on page-14.                                                                                                But when you click on

Snowdance 2 you get another page that doesn't have this Sunday showing listed.  My guess is that the website will be the most reliable because they can still make changes there that they can't make on the printed programs. 

It seems to me that last year I had a lot more trouble finding times on the website.  I think this year's website will make it much easier to find exactly where and when each film is, even the shorts.

Meanwhile I'm checking if the Sunday showing is correct and I'll update this when I find out. 


Here's Peter's new short animation, "Anchorage, First Snow":



One other things about the shorts.  If last year's festival is any indication, some of the better shorts will show up before some of the features, like they used to do with cartoons in the old days.

[UPDATE Nov. 21 Noon:  The Festival has confirmed Snowdance 1 is at the Bear Tooth at 3pm on Sunday Dec. 6, NOT Snowdance 2.  But you still have four chances to see Peter's Frozen Shorts.  Now I haven't seen it myself, but if you liked the First Snow, you probably will like his festival entry.  And a lot of the other films in Snowdance 2 and Animation 1 should be worth it.  Some of the most creative stuff shows up in the animation.  And if you don't like a film, it'll be over in a few minutes anyway and you get to see the next one. ]